The failure to admit the enormous and shocking policy failures of the last two years is costing us dearly. The refusal to reverse course and re-embrace fundamentals of freedom and human rights is setting the stage for outcomes even more grim than what we have heretofore experienced.
We have called this Progressive Fascism because at bottom it turns the very idea of America upside-down by subordinating the citizen to the state and by attaining the collective good through the centralized exercise of political power rather than the liberty-based endeavors of a free people.
Any regime that wants to stay in power needs to know this secret to hegemony: the desire to cleanse society of the enemy is what compels compliance. Every tyranny in history has depended on recruits to its own ranks from within the culture. They believe the lie knowing full well that it is a lie. The lie allows them to participate in the purge. They become the willing executioners. It’s been true throughout history, regardless of the particular and shifting desiderata of the despotism of the moment.
How does all this end? It doesn’t end. History rolls forward in the current direction of decline so long as no one is there to stand athwart it and yell stop and reverse course. How bad must it get before human rationality and reason take over from political egos and careerist duplicity? We are going to find out in the next 12 months. It’s going to be a very long winter, as two weeks to flatten the curve gradually and painfully turns into three years of remarkable and wholly preventable wreckage.
Gigi Foster, professor of economics at the University of New South Wales, is author of The Great Covid Panic (Brownstone, 2012). She has been granting interviews all over Australia and New Zealand, in addition to other countries around the world. You can hear her views in this fascinating podcast.
Two lengthy interviews with Brownstone founder and president are now online. The first is with the Bill Walton show, and the second is with journalist and author Robin Koerner. Excerpts from the above: “We’ve dealt …
The Fight for Civilization: Two Interviews with Jeffrey Tucker Read More
We had better hope and pray that the anger against the government and the ruling class does not ultimately turn against the free economy itself. In order for that not to happen, the intellectual opposition to the current regime needs to get its thinking straight, give up its old habits, see the current struggle for what it is, and start celebrating the freedom of everyone.
It’s tremendously sad to see a whole nation slip so far so fast into decline, as evidenced by the latest labor-market data that has profoundly impacted the most vulnerable. It is easily reversible but we seem to lack the wisdom and courage that would be required to turn this around.
It’s true that Biden does not have the power to impose that directly but he might have the power to order a regulatory body under his authority to write rules that amount to the same thing. And even if the regulatory agency never gets around to it, the perception that the order is real and enforceable is enough to cause the outcome he desires.
International tourist arrivals are down by 85% from 2019. A third of the world’s borders are shut. There seems to be no movement in the direction of reversing this disaster and reinstituting the wonderful world of 2019. In fact, there seems to be very little awareness that this has happened to us much less of the terrible consequences. Forget the freedom of movement; the Biden administration has only promised to open up “when it is safe to do so.”
Free people of the world are duly warned: embark on this path at your own risk. What you take for granted today may well be gone for good
They were assigned to the frontlines. They bore the burden, not only of doing the work but of being exposed to the virus and gaining natural immunities that the ruling class now tells them does not count for real immunity. Do they have reason to be resentful? The answer is clearly yes.
